I’ve been hitting the lake on a regular basis and finding plenty of fish to keep me busy. The bite has been great for me over the past few weeks and I guess you could say that we’ve hit the summer pattern. The lake temps are hovering around the mid to upper 80’s and the thermocline is scattered throughout the creeks and out in the lower lake right now. The stripers and bass are taking up residence in their predicable locations and using a variety of methods for catching these fish can lead to a day of fun fishing…..

For the bass I’ve been starting my mornings very early (dawn) casting a topwater favorite over the same brush piles I’ve been drop shotting later in the day. This time of year the bass are reluctant to hit the surface but early in the morning and sporadically throughout the day they will attack the bluebacks swimming near the surface and they will attack a surface lure as well. Unfortunately this is one of those times of the year that the fish doesn’t stay up on the surface long so if you’re site fishing, making a quick and accurate cast is key to catching the surfacing fish. Basically, a topwater fish is a low percentage endeavor and I’m starting to see more and more bass refusing to come back after a topwater bait just seconds after they initially surface. Just yesterday I was able to catch some nice topwater fish just blind casting wind blown points but the chop across the point had to be perfect before they would surface. Just about every fish I caught on the topwater was a good 3lb+ stout fish and they attacked the topwater baits like they were hungry with the aggressiveness of the stripers. Lately the only topwater bait I have tied on and at the ready is the bone Sexy Dawg. The bass in the picture above was caught yesterday 7-7-2016, mid-morning on a wind blown point using the bone Sexy Dawg.

If the topwater isn’t working there are a couple other options I’ve been using to put fish in the boat. The first is casting a Fish Head Spin or underspin across the top of brush on humps or out on the ends of points. I’ve been targeting the brush in 25-35 feet of water. There are some fish at the shallower depths but I think the bigger fish have been deeper and near deep deep water. For the under spin, I’ve been using a 1/4 ounce with a pearl super fluke, casting across the brush pile and counting it down to 5-10 seconds with a steady retrieve over the brush pile and back to the boat. Another tactic you can try if the underspin isn’t working or the wind kicks up a little and that’s a jig. Take your pick, there are plenty to choose from that will work right now. I’m just casting a 3/8 or 1/2 ounce size type casting jig with a watermelon trailer, letting it sink and slowly crawling it across the bottom. Sometimes you’ll feel a distinct thump and other times they rod will just load up or get heavy. Most of the time the larger fish have been on the under spin and the jig.

Once I’ve had some fun with those three early morning tactics and the sun gets higher, I’m going to the drop shot tactic. For me, the drop shot is like playing a video game, I’m just finding the brush and fish on the electronics and dropping my little drop shot rig right down in front of them. Sometimes they hit it right away and sometimes I just dead stick the bait in a waiting game. There are times when holding the drop shot worm perfectly still will entice a bite and other times I have to make the worm dance to get a reaction. A lot of times I’m very focused on my electronics and I am watching the fish as well as my worm on my sonar screen. I can watch the fish chase the bait down and get hooked in real time. Worm color and size selection is a whole other topic. We’ve been using different  sizes and colors, some days it matters and some days it doesn’t. My wife Lisa is the queen of color selections while I’m more of a tried and true kinda guy. We are both competitive and always have a competition on the drop shot. Lisa has that women’s touch which is perfect for that type of finesse fishing and the drop shot is her specialty so it’s always a challenge for me to beat her at the drop shot. Earlier this week she mopped up on me for numbers using a worm color that I never dreamed of using but it worked. Last year Lisa came up with a worm color that was a lock for us in late summer. We had a blast with it and caught some nice big fish just drop shotting our normal brush piles. It was just a color and size that the bigger fish reacted to during that period in time. I caught my biggest drop shot fish on that worm while the corps was generating in the brutal afternoon heat and got it on video. It’s probably my favorite drop shot video from last summer and that fish put up one heck of a fight on light tackle:
You can see the way I’m working the worm in the video. I’m using 6-7lb fluorocarbon line with a 3/8 ounce drop shot weight and a #2 or #4 VMC Spinshot hook about 18 inches up from the weight.

Once I’ve had my fill of drop shotting bass I’m moving on to a bigger target which is our summer striper population. I’m only carrying one item for stripers this time of year but the excitement that lure provides is more than enough for a day of fishing. The lure I’m carrying is the Ben Parker Magnum Spoon and the summer stripers just love this thing. You need to work the spoon kinda like working the drop shot, it’s a matter of seeing the fish on your electronics, dropping the spoon vertically and enticing them to bite. Finding the stripers to drop the spoon to is the hardest part of the equation and it may require some driving and watching your electronics for arches in deep water. Once you find the arches it’s as easy as dropping the spoon and reeling it back up. The stripers will let you know when they hit the spoon, sometimes taking you by surprise and trying to jerk the rod out of your hands.
Here is a video I made last summer that can give you an idea of the way the spoon tactic works for stripers.
A lot of folks have asked what rig I was using. The rig I was using to catch those big stripers was a big Penn Fierce 6000 reel loaded with 25lb Big Game on a 7′ Ugly Stik Heavy Spinning rod. I like the bigger reels because you can gain line very quick with the big spool and gear ratio. We’ve already been catching some nice fish on the spoon, both up lake a ways and down lake as well. It seems that the fish are scattered in groups and finding fish and having a group of fish to yourself is very possible right now. The spoon bite is only going to get better as we progress through the summer and I’m looking forward to a couple months and a solid pattern of hitting the brush for bass and spooning summer stripers for a change of pace. I haven’t really been taking many pictures or videos lately but here’s a few pictures from so recent trips out:

I spent a little time with my buddy Brad Myers and his radio show, Georgia Outdoors Radio 92.5 “The Bear” FM. We talked about Lake Lanier stripers and bass this morning and some of the tactics we’re using right now. We talked about spooning up a couple of stripers for the grill and a good striper recipe we use for a little summer holiday stripers on the half shell. I also talked about the drop shot tactic and the fun we’ve been having with that. Just click on the link below. My portion of the show starts at the 91:45 mark.

https://www.spreaker.com/user/georgiaoutdoorsradio/gor-07-02-16?fb_action_ids=963130547119547&fb_action_types=spreaker_radio%3Abroadcast&fb_ref=image_bigbutton

It’s been a couple weeks since my last report and the topwater is still going strong. For the past 2 weeks there was a good mix of stripers and bass out on the creek points very early in the morning. If you got out in the creek at dawn, you could see the fish surfacing and fishing these areas with a variety of topwater baits has produced a lot of nice fish lately. Being in the right place at the right time helps tremendously when it comes to catching these fish. More times than not, if you get your bait in the area of surfacing fish too late, the fish will not come back up for it. The window of opportunity to catch these fish has been small and basically, if you don’t get to them while they are on the surface or seconds after they surface, there not coming back up. That tells us that the water at the surface is degrading in oxygen levels. If the levels were good, the fish would be more than happy to come back up after a bait. The good part was that 2 weeks ago there was still a good mix of stripers and bass together and we caught a lot of stripers and bass but that is changing fast in the creek. Most of my trips last week were runs out to the creek at dawn and back at the ramp by 9am. I did get a chance to take a couple of people out to enjoy the topwater bite. Here’s a few pics from a trip with my friend Mark who joined me for an early morning creek run last week and a couple videos of my wife Lisa walking the Sexy Dawg topwater bait last weekend as well as a video of some early summer hump fishing this week.

Just as in past years there comes a time when the stripers migrate from the reaches of the creek to the deep mouth or main lake and join forces in big schools to spend the hot summer feeding on bluebacks in the thermocline layer.  That’s what is going on right now. I’m starting to see less and less stripers in the creek and more and more out on the main lake. Most of the stripers still coming to the surface are smaller fish and the bigger stripers are going deeper in the water column. This is the time of year I start changing my tactics to a summer pattern and looking for fish out on the main lake. Don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of bass in the creek worth catching but I’d rather be out on the main lake humps where a lot of big bass are taking up their summer residence. The big bass and smaller stripers are coming up very early in the morning for a dawn feeding on the humps and then the stripers go deep but the topwater bass bite has been coming back around about mid day right now.  It’s the down time between the dawn bite and the midday bite that been tough to figure out. I’ve been catching a few with different subsurface methods when the fish have been suspended around structure on the humps. Right now I’ve been biding my time with the dropshot, jigs and shakeyhead around the structure and bagging a few nice ones.

Another option for early to mid morning right now is a crankbait on the cool shady chunk rock areas near the mouths of the creeks and out on the islands. During the over night hours the big rocks tend to cool and by morning the big rocks provide a nice cool little haven for baitfish as well as crawfish. Throwing a medium to deep diving crankbait in a shad or summer crawfish pattern around the shady rocky shoreline in the mornings is a lock for a few nice bass foraging for a morning meal.

After the morning and midday bite is over, it’s back to the dropshot on deeper structure for the rest of the day for me. If you can stand the heat, the Corps has been generating in the afternoon and into the evening lately which usually gets the dropshot bite going around structure on the main lake humps near the river channel. If the water is moving during generation, the bass are usually looking for a meal around the structure. If you’re new to the dropshot or looking for these main lake humps to find where the summer bass hang out, just look for shallower areas that are near the river channel. These are not visible to the naked eye so you need a good contour map to actually see the humps. You need to look for the humps that come up to 25-40 feet in depth and seek out the structure in these areas. If there is brush or structure on the hump, there’s bound to be bass. Soon we’ll have a solid thermocline out on the main lake and it will be time for our summer striper spoon bite so stay tuned for that. Water temps are in the mid 80’s right now.

Yesterday I took my friend Clint out for a 1 hour run to the humps at dawn. There has been some good surface activity on the humps and Clint had an hour before he went to work to catch a nice bass on topwater. Clint was throwing a blueback colored Whopper Plopper and nailed his personal best magnum spot. Here’s a pic of Clint’s spot and some random pictures from the last week including a few pictures of my new “Hump Buster” topwater plug.

Not much has changed since my last report and fishing is pretty typical for this time of the year. I will say one thing that is a noticeable difference from past years and that’s the population increase of stripers. I’m sure we can attribute that to the Georgia DNR’s stocking program and the great numbers of fingerlings they have been putting in the lake for the past few years. I think there were a few stockings in upwards of 600k fingerlings over the past 10 years which is almost double from what the lake would generally get. The stripers from those stockings are starting to get bigger and showing up around the lake in good numbers. The water quality is good all around the lake including the far reaches of the creek arms which means the fish are scattered throughout the lake. Right now you have many options for catching fish. The biggest ticket item has been the early morning striper and bass topwater bite. It’s fun, fast and furious. A lot of the fish I’ve been catching on topwater have been relating to structure, particularly the bass but the stripers have been present in the same areas. Basically the fish are using the structure as home base while moving around the structure looking for a meal. My recommendation right now for targeting these fish is some kind of bone or light colored plug, whether it’s topwater or something running just below the surface. Here’s a short video to explain how I’ve been getting a few. The second striper in the video was taken with a Sebile Magic Swimmer. I was just moving around sight fishing.

I’m still getting a few fish on the Emerald Popper on cloudy days and low light conditions but the more aggressive fish have been hitting the solid bone or light colors right now. There are several different topwater baits that will work and several different manufacturers that make a bone colored topwater bait or sub-surface bait. Here’s a picture of one I make in the shop and the one I used in the video above.

Once the topwater bite dies off about 9-10am it’s time for the grind. I’ve been squeezing out a few more fish with a chrome Rattle Trap or a Sebile Magic Swimmer after the surface activity subsides in the same areas but once that’s over I’ve been hitting the docks and shoreline with the shaky head or a shallow diving crankbait in a shad pattern. The docks have been producing a lot of smaller fish lately but if you’re looking for numbers and not size, docks and the backs of pockets will provide a lot of smaller fish on a variety of baits. I’ve also been catching a few fish around blow-downs with a shad pattern jerkbait. Here’s a picture of the jerkbait pattern I’ve been using around blown-downs rocky points and shallow structure.

One other way I’ve been picking up fish recently after the topwater bite slows is to circle back around and keep fishing the same areas of early morning surfacing fish but casting a Blueback Herring pattern Shadow Rap. I’m just casting around the areas and particularly over areas of underwater structure from 20-30 feet in depth. It seems that some of the bigger fish are heading out to deeper water for the summer and spending their days looking for drifting bluebacks. Here’s a pic of a nice one caught in the early afternoon over deep water with the Shadow Rap.

Here’s a few recent rattle trap and popper fish.

With the water temps fluctuating right now the topwater pattern is hit and miss so it’s good to have a few alternate methods because there are going to be days the topwater just doesn’t happen. Water temps as I write this are just above 70 degrees and the water visibility is getting clearer by the day. Over all the topwater bite should last another month or so before the fish hunker down in the depths for a hot summer.

I fished 4 days last week including Saturday and Sunday. Sunday was the HD Marine tournament and our club tournament. My club partner covered the club tournament and did very well as a solo. My HD partner and I fished Saturday to pre-fish and had no problem finding a limit on 2 tactics. It’s been the same pattern for a while now with the topwater very early in the morning on humps and points followed by docks, rocks and shoreline. When I say very early in the morning I mean right at the crack of dawn. In the overnight hours the fish have been loading up on the points and by morning the fish are ripe for the picking. If no one has fished the points where we have been catching fish or we see fish come to the surface in the creek and those fish remain undisturbed, we called that a “green point”. It’s pretty easy to find green points on the weekdays. Most of the points remain undisturbed for hours and I can go from point to point and get first dibs on the fish that are cruising the point and feeding on the spawning bluebacks and shad that are also moving over the points. Here’s a quick video from some green point fishing early in the morning.

Those kinds of days are great for making cool videos but during the weekends things change with recreational and tournament fishermen hitting the points in the creek and reducing the number of green points very early. The idea is to hit as many green points as you can before the masses flood into the creek and spoil the fun. Another challenge you have once you start fishing the green points is those pesky stripers. There are a few times a year the stripers and bass mix together and you can catch a bass on one cast and a striper on the next. The problem is that when you’re fishing a bass tournament and a big pesky striper decided to snatch your lure, it wastes time….I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like fighting a striper as much as the next guy but you can’t bring em to the scales and time is money. This is one of the time gobblers from yesterday:

So yesterday, tournament day, our plan was to hit a big fish road bed I found followed by hitting the green points and then go to the docks after lunch. I found a nice road bed out on the main lake earlier in the week that held some good fish and from fishing in the same area earlier during the week I knew that it had been undisturbed by just about everyone for days. There were a lot of 3-5 pounders coming up very early and with the overcast skies predicted for the morning I figured we could get a good start with a nice fish or two very early on tournament morning and then assess the creek situation for green points. We were in the first flight so we were able to put the hammer down out of Little Hall and make it to the south end fairly quickly. When we pulled up to the road bed I popped a nice 4.10 on one of the first casts but after we netted that fish the stripers stole the show and snatched just about everything we put in the water which spooked the bass. We moved on to the creek and started hitting points, 2 of which were green. We were able to boat the other 4 fish to make up our 5 limit off the green points with 3 on the popper and 1 on a donkey rig my partner was throwing. When we moved to the docks around mid to late morning we only upgraded one small fish on the docks for an 11.50lb finish. We had a few opportunities for bigger fish and lost 2 very nice fish but it is what it is.

Basically the pattern has been the topwater popper early with follow-up baits like a light colored Sebile Magic Swimmer, Chug Bug or even a Fluke donkey rig will work. If the wind is up we caught a few using spinner baits on points and rocky banks. We’ve also been doing well for numbers around and between docks, very shallow, with the shaky head, donkey rigs and weigh less flukes. I’m still using the darker worms on the shaky head and sometimes it’s amazing how shallow the fish have been between the docks. Some of them were so shallow their little dorsals were still bone dry when I got them to the boat. LOL This little largemouth was one of the very shallow fish, hiding in the shadows.

Water temps are creeping past the mid 70’s and summer is on it’s way. I’m looking forward to more and more fish headed out to the main lake humps and the typical summer patterns.

For the past few weeks I’ve been on the same pattern on Lanier. As the water warms, the fish have been getting very much more active and it’s really been easy pickins for us. I’ve been hitting the creek very early in the morning and finding stripers on points that are more than willing to come to the surface for a meal. This doesn’t mean you need to see the fish to catch them, just pull up to a point and start casting. The fish are there! I’ve been using 2 topwater options to catch these early morning stripers; first is the Bone colored Vixen topwater bait made by Reaction Innovations. This is a topwater type walking bait with a couple of big ball bearings in it. When you walk it, the ball bearings move from side to side and create a distinct clunking sound that attracts the fish. The walking style and the size of the Vixen resembles a big blueback on the surface and right now there are a lot of fish looking for bluebacks preparing to spawn and swimming on the surface in the early morning warming sun. The Vixen is a bait that I first used early last spring for spawning stripers moving through the back of our creek but I found that later in the spring and into early summer the bass just loved the Vixen so we milked it out until early July. A lot of times I was catching very nice fish out on main lake humps through late spring to early summer. I liked the Vixen so much last year I wrote a story about it. https://castawayblog.com/2015/03/24/fixin-the-bone-vixen/
Right now a good place to find the bone Vixen is the Hammonds Fishing Center online store. I’d definitely get a few for the upcoming topwater season. Looks like they have 29 in stock! http://www.hammondsfishing.com/Reaction-Innovations-Vixen-Bone-p/76839.htm

Another early morning topwater bait we’ve been using this spring with great success is my own Emerald popper. This is a bait I started making in the fall of 2014. I actually made the bait for a nearby lake but we found it seemed to work better on Lanier. The Emerald popper is now a bait that has been working for us with great success in the spring and fall topwater seasons and it’s been my topwater go-to bait for the last few weeks. If you are interested in trying this bait, here’s link to my website:  http://www.castawaybaits.com/product/the-emerald-popper/

Here’s a little more info on the popper and how I’m using it.

The Emerald Popper

After the sun has been getting up around mid mornings there are options. You can continue on with the surface lures and get a few good bass or stripers throughout the day but I’ve been switching to a few other baits with great success.

If I want to hit the banks or points in the wind a good choice is the Mini Me spinnerbaits by Spotsticker Baits. This is a great bait for these windy spring days and my favorite has been a white profile, white blades and I’ve been adding one of my little 3.5 inch fluke baits as a trailer. On windy days spinnerbaits are a must this spring for wind-blown points and shoreline.

If you like to hit the docks like I do, we’ve been having great success with 2 options right now. The first is my favorite which is the shakeyhead with a 6 inch trick worm in just about any darker color. There are a lot of different worms that will work on the shakeyhead around docks but I like the bigger 6 inch trick worms because it cuts down on the dinks. You can feel the dinks pecking at the bait but the bigger bass have been hammering the bigger worms. The shakeyhead is a finesse type tactic but once you get the feel for it, it’s the Bomb! The best docks for the shakeyhead right now are the ones with natural rock. Just about every dock we’ve been hitting with natural rock has been holding fish. A good choice for your shakyheads are the Spotskicker Screwball Shaky in a 1/4 ounce or 3/16 ounce in a green pumpkin color. Here’s a tip: dip the tail of your worm in a little Spike-it garlic flavored chartreuse worm dip. It seems like the bass have been holding the worm longer with the garlic flavor. Here’s a couple nice fish from last week on the shakyhead.

Another tactic that has been good for numbers around the docks are weightless fluke style baits. We’ve been rigging white weightless flukes and throwing them inside the empty slips or as far back between docks as you can get it. You can’t get too shallow with a weightless fluke. Just cast it, let it sink for a few seconds and just bring it slowly back to the boat in short jerks and then stopping and letting it sink again. This tactic is always good in the spring for these active bass and sometimes a hungry striper.

Guys, there’s a lot of baits that work right now and as usual the spring provides us some great opportunities for a few fish. Even if you just get a bucket of minnows and take the kids for a day on the lake, right now the rewards can make memories that last a lifetime! Good luck this spring!

I got out Tuesday, Wednesday and yesterday this week and started with water temps in the upper 50’s on Tuesday. I mainly fished inside Shoal and Bald Ridge creeks this week. I caught a few fish with a spinnerbait around docks in the backs of pockets early in the morning and out on windy points later in the morning but the real numbers came from a shaky head on docks in the afternoons this week and also topwater on points. If you really want to sharpen your shaky head skills, now is the time because there are a lot of fish on the docks in the afternoons and the shaky head is a great tactic right now with these active fish. I’ve been catching a lot of smaller fish on the shaky head but every once in a while I’d get a nice one. For my shaky head I’m mainly using a 1/4 ounce Spotsticker Screwball Shaky in green pumpkin with a dark colored BPS Tournament Series 6″ trick worm. I’ve been dipping the tail of the worm in a little chartreuse garlic dip. You can see a picture of the trick worm color below. I like the 6 inch because it cuts down on dinks but I’m sure the smaller worm sizes would work great for better numbers. I’m using my light spinning gear with 6-7lb fluorocarbon. I’ve just been pitching and dropping the worm around the edges and inside slips as well as up in the shallow gaps between the docks. Docks with rocky shoreline has been the best producer for me. To me this is finesse fishing and kinda reminds me of drop shot fishing as you’re mainly fishing by feel and most of the time just feeling for a small tap. A lot of times the fish just picks up the worm and starts swimming off with it so I watch my rod tip and line angle and keep the slack out of my line as much as I can. Most times when the fish swims off with the worm it just feels like spongy weight and that’s when the hook set comes in. I probably have just as many missed hook sets as I do good ones but the shaky head in the afternoon around docks has been a lot of fun this week for numbers.

I didn’t fish yesterday but when I got out around 9:30 this morning (4-1-2016), water temps were in the low 60’s and the topwater was on! It pretty much started on my third cast and I caught some pretty nice fish out on points and over brush today, plus I left them biting. It stayed overcast which kept the topwater bite going throughout the day. There was also just the right amount of chop on the water and I was setting the boat up wind and casting down wind across the points and then bringing the popper back against the wind. I did a lot of popping, splashing and waking to get the fish to come up and I saw very little surface activity other than when they would come up to whack the popper. If I had a brush pile marked out on a point I positioned the boat up wind of the brush and cast the popper down wind and brought it back over the brush pile and caught fish at just about every stop. I did the same thing with the spinner bait this week and also caught fish over brush when the wind kicked up to high for the popper to work on the points. If the water temps continue to climb I think the topwater bite should do well and I think the bass should stay on the docks for a while. Here’s a few pics and a little bit of video from this week.